The Last Episode of Year One

This is the last episode of Year One of Rebelling. 

What started as a conversation about neurodivergence grew into curiosity about humanity, systems, and what it really means to live fully in a world that often doesn’t make sense. This year has been about asking questions, leaning into not knowing, and choosing connection over trying to get it “right.”

Year Two will take us deeper into exploring the things that dehumanize us.  We'll interrogate the systems and norms that make it difficult to get out of survival mode, and start to build ways to live relationally instead. It starts April 21! 

Plus, I’m kicking off Rebelling Study Hall- free, live, virtual sessions starting May 2 for reflection, questions, and real conversation. Sign up here

Transcript

Amy Knott Parrish (00:05)
Hey y'all, welcome back to Rebelling. This episode is our last episode in year one of Rebelling. And I just wanted to take some time to reflect on the past year.

and to look back a little bit at this first year of making this podcast. You know, making a podcast was something that I always wanted to do. I've wanted to do it for years and it took me a long time to get up the courage to do it, to put my mind to being...

someone who has an idea that they want to share and to ⁓ just take the chance of putting something out in the world that has a permanence but also an impermanence at the same time. And one of the things that held me back was that I felt like I had to get it right, that I had to do it the right way, ⁓ the acceptable way.

And what really freed me from that was when I got ⁓ my ADHD and autism diagnoses, I felt like I suddenly was free to stop trying to be normal.

And that let me imagine.

doing and making something that was just me, that wasn't trying to be normal, that wasn't trying to fit into a prescribed formula or way of doing things, but just sharing myself and my thoughts with you.

And so I did.

And I am.

You know, the technological challenges of putting this together. I'm just smiling, thinking about all the things I didn't know last year at this time as I was getting ready, as I was planning, as I was putting things together, trying to figure out what platform to use to record, how to record it, how to edit the sound, how to put music in, how to do

all of the things, how to put it on my website, how to put it out on other platforms so people could hear it. There's so many little things that go into making this podcast and it takes me a really long time and it is truly something that is frustrating that I also love.

A lot of things have changed in the year over the course of the year that I've been doing this. You know, last year, the focus started with neurodivergence and like most people, ⁓

being diagnosed has faded into the background over the past year and it has become not something that I'm holding out in front of myself, but something that is actually an integral part of me.

And that's been interesting to see how strongly I felt about sharing the neurodivergent experience at the beginning and how it absorbed into more of an expression of being in the world.

and how that gave me.

a sense of curiosity that felt like it wanted to leap into new ideas because they didn't have to be arranged just so for me to put them out into the world. It could just be learning out loud without answers.

Some things are the same. My desire to learn and think and know about humans and our experience.

my commitment to being in community and talking out loud about ways that the system we live in doesn't make sense.

It's interesting to see how my shift has gone from focusing on neurodivergence to really focusing on humanity and our experience of being in the

⁓ some of the important questions that we asked. We started small with neurodivergence and then we moved into shame, burnout. One of the most remarkable things for me was putting together

like neuroqueering, addiction sobriety and recovery and understanding that I wasn't addicted, I was adapting.

Rewriting the story of addiction, sobriety, and recovery outside of the pathology paradigm, to name it, adaptation.

rewriting the story of addiction, sobriety, and recovery outside the pathology paradigm, naming it adaptation, sensing, and reconnecting instead.

wondering

what it means to live fully when everything around you says you shouldn't and then questioning certainty. What if I don't know isn't a flaw but the beginning of connection? That idea has really struck me. It really really stuck with me.

not knowing as a way to invite people in. And that, after that episode, really, ⁓ it really became sort of a way I leaned into sharing my work, what I'm working on, what I see, how I interact with my guests. If I don't know,

Where can we go?

Another of my favorite moments from this year is in my conversation with Keltie McLaren talking about you don't connect by making people understand you. You connect by letting yourself be understood. And for me, as I wrap up this first year, I think that's exactly what it's been about. It's been about connection and curiosity and

being willing to.

⁓ being willing to just be as much of yourself as you can be.

so that people can know you, so that you can know other people, that it became not about being right or good, it became about being human.

From the beginning, this podcast wasn't about having all the answers. It was about holding questions, ⁓ talking about contradictions, about questioning things that ⁓ on paper seem to make sense. And we kind of go along with it, but it

Actually, when you get down to the basics doesn't make sense.

These are the things that I want to continue to look at.

I've really learned that rebellion isn't intellectual, that it's embodied, that it's relational, that it's the choices we make every day to honor ourselves and each other.

Rebellion isn't.

only about resisting, resisting things like the pressure to perform normalcy as the right way to do humanity, but about actually disrupting the way we are in the world so that we can be more fully human.

really appreciate you listening. I really appreciate all the people who have encouraged me, who continue to encourage me, who sent me an email when something resonated.

I appreciate and thank you for showing up, whether it was for every episode or only one or two. I'm incredibly grateful for all of my guests, people who said yes when I asked them to be on, who took the risk of showing up without a plan and who opened up their thoughts and ideas to this space where

Our only guideline is curiosity.

It has been such a pleasure to sit and edit these conversations and hear our ideas reflected back at us.

to hear the things that we got into without even having a plan.

To see where our minds would take us if we just gave ourselves the freedom to have conversation was so, so gratifying.

And so now we're going to move into year two and this year we're going to go deeper. The next year of rebelling is really going to explore how the systems we live in shape our lives, the ways we get dehumanized and what we want to do with that. ⁓ we'll talk about things like social norms.

resources, relationships, ⁓ human behavior, what makes sense, what doesn't make sense. I want to take apart the paradoxical assumptions and expectations we live by and start to rebuild the way we communicate and care for one another.

and name our experiences, continue to name them, continue to explore them without judgment.

and we'll show up one episode at a time just to see what comes alive in the moment.

That going deeper also means that I wanted to create an opportunity for us to talk live together. And so I'm gonna try doing something called, I'm calling Rebelling Study Hall. And Rebelling Study Hall is a no-cost virtual group session where we can reflect, discuss,

ask questions.

have a conversation together.

Rebelling study hall is free. Rebelling study hall is an hour on Saturdays starting May 2nd from 1130 a.m. to 1230 p.m. Eastern. And it's a space for us to ask questions, ⁓ for us to share our thoughts and to engage with each other in a personal way.

⁓ They won't be recorded so that we can just have really open honest dialogue.

So in year two, humanity becomes the backbone of the podcast. It becomes the backbone of rebelling.

And I'm excited to see where we go with that. have some, I have some guests in mind that I'm looking forward to seeing if asking them to be on to see, if they'll say yes. I would love to hear any ideas that you have for ⁓ anything you're interested in, you want to talk about, I feel like we don't talk about enough.

I also would love to hear anything that just baffles you or doesn't make sense and you don't understand why we're not talking about it.

So thank you again for an incredible year one. And in the second year, we'll have more reflection, more questions, and more curiosity, and more rebellion.

So until next time, remember, it's not all about being normal. It's about being human.

Year two comes out starting Tuesday, April 21st. And until then, keep rebelling. Bye.